Thursday, June 12, 2014

Suarez, Kasich: Back to the log cabins

I see that the defense lawyers in the Benjamin Suarez trial  have made a point of tellng the jury that the millionaire Republican businessman has risen mightily from  a lean childhood in an epic  rags-to-riches testament to his  personal work ethic. He was, after all, gathering up trash at a drive-in theater when he was only 8 years old.
I don't question that  was the case.

Don't question that at all.     But...so what? The adult was charged. Not the kid.  

Then we have the similar pitch as told by  the anti-union  Gov.Kasich in his reelection campaign that he sprang from childhood  blue collar roots to his lofty position today. Blue collar, yes, which somehow prepared him to engage the white collar corporate executives like Sheldon Adelson in his comfort zone. (Dare I describe the new John Kasich as the compassionate conservative  of George W. Bush's fantasies?)

Again, so what? 

Allow me a peek into my own childhood, in which I grew up in a house facing a battered outhouse across the street  used as the privy for a hobbled old black woman who lived by candlelight in a shed-like  hovel.  Somebody might even mention it if I were running for governor.  So what? 

People born with silver spoons may offer something positive to humanity.  Othere wind up in bankruptcy.

The point is, you must be judged on who you are today, not who you were many years ago.

With Suarez as well as Kasich we are still  talking about log cabins.   True or not, so what?

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